CHAPTER TWO

 

Even in London there was a little diluted sunshine - sunshine that brightened and grew stronger as they drove through the diminishing smoke of the outer suburbs, until at last, somewhere near Esher, they had travelled into the most brilliant of early spring mornings.

      Under a fur rug, Mr Stoyte sprawled diagonally across the read seat of the car.  More for his own good, this time, than for his physician's, he was back again on sedatives, and found it hard, before lunch, to keep awake.  With a fitful stertorousness he had dozed almost from the moment they drove away from the Ritz.

      Pale and with sad eyes, silently ruminating an unhappiness which five days of rain on the Atlantic and three more of London gloom had done nothing to alleviate, Virginia sat aloof in the front seat.

      At the wheel (for he had thought it best to take no chauffeur on this expedition) Dr Obispo whistled to himself and, occasionally, even sang aloud - sang, 'Stretti, stretti, nell'estasi d'amor'; sang, 'Do you think a l-ittle drink'll do us any harm?' sang, 'I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls.'  It was partly the fine weather that made him so cheerful - springtime, he said to himself, the only merry ringtime, not to mention the lesser celandines, the windflowers, whatever they might be, the primroses in the copse.  And should he ever forget his bewilderment when English people had started talking about cops in the singular and in contexts where policemen seemed deliriously out of place?  'Let's go and pick some primroses in the cops.'  Surprising intestinal flora!  Better even than the carp's.  Which brought him to the second reason for his satisfaction with life.  They were on their way, perhaps, to finding something interesting about the Fifth Earl, something significant about the relationship between senility and sterols and the intestinal flora of the carp.

      With mock-operatic emphasis he burst again into song.  'I drea-heamt I dwe-helt in mar-harble halls,' he proclaimed, 'with vass-als and serfs at my si-hi-hide.  And of all who assembled with-hin those walls, that I was the hope and the pri-hi-hide.'

      Virginia, who had been sitting beside him, stony with misery, turned round in sudden exasperation.  'Oh, for heaven's sake!' she almost screamed, breaking the silence that had lasted all the way from Kingston-on-Thames.  'Can't you be quiet?'

      Dr Obispo ignored her protests.  'I had riches,' he sang on (and reflected, with an inward chuckle of satisfaction as he did so, that the statement now happened to be true), 'I had riches too grea-heat to cou-hount.'  No; that was an exaggeration.  Not at all too great to count.  Just a nice little competence.  Enough to give him security and the means to continue his researches without having to waste his time on a lot of sick people who ought to be dead.  Two hundred thousand dollars in cash and forty-five hundred acres of land in the San Felipe Valley - land that Uncle Jo had positively sworn was just on the point of getting its irrigation water.  (And if it didn't get it, God! how he'd twist the old buzzard's tail for him!)  'Heart failure due to myocarditis of rheumatic origin.'  He could have asked a lot more than two hundred thousand for that death-certificate.  Particularly as it hadn't been his only service.  No, sir!  There had been all the mess to clear up.  (The ninety-five dollar fawn-coloured suit was ruined after all.)  There had been the servants to keep away; the Baby to put to bed with a big shot of morphia; the permission to cremate the body to be obtained from the next of kin, who was a sister, living, thank God, in straitened circumstances, and at Pensacola, Florida, so that she fortunately couldn't afford to come out to California for the funeral.  And then (most ticklish of all) there had been the search for a dishonest undertaker; the discovery of a possible crook; the interview, with its veiled hints of an unfortunate accident to be hushed up, of money that was, practically speaking, no object; then, when the fellow had fired off his sanctimonious little speech about its being a  duty to help a leading citizen to avoid unpleasant publicity, the abrupt change of manner, the business-like statement of the unavoidable facts and the necessary fictions, the negotiations as to price.  In the end, Mr Pengo had agreed not to notice the holes in Pete's skull for as little as twenty-five thousand dollars.

      'I had riches too gre-heat to cou-hount, could boast of a hi-yish ancestral name.'  Yes, decidedly, Dr Obispo reflected, as he sang, decidedly he could have asked for a great deal more.  But what would have been the point?  He was a reasonable man; almost, you might say, a philosopher; modest in his ambitions, uninterested in worldly success, and with tastes so simple that the most besetting of them, outside the sphere of scientific research, could be satisfied in the great majority of cases at practically no expense whatsoever, sometimes even with a net profit, as when Mrs Bojanus had given him that solid gold cigarette-case as a token of her esteem - and then there were Josephine's pearl studs, and the green enamel cufflinks with his monogram in diamonds from little what's-her-name ...

      'But I a-halso drea-heamt which plea-heased me most,' he sang, raising his voice for his final affirmation and putting in a passionate tremolo, 'that you lo-hoved me sti-hill the same, that lo-hoved me sti-hill the same, that you loved me,' he repeated, turning away for a moment from the Portsmouth road to peer with raised eyebrows and a look of amused, ironical enquiry into Virginia's averted face, 'you lo-hoved me stil-hill the same,' and, for the fourth time with tremendous emphasis and pathos, 'that you lo-ho-ho-hoved me sti-hi-hill the same.'

      He shot another glance at Virginia.  She was staring straight in front of her, holding her lower lip between her teeth, as though she were in pain but determined not to cry out.

      'Did I dream correctly?'  His smile was wolfish.

      The Baby did not answer.  From the back seat Mr Stoyte snored like a bulldog.

      'Do you lo-ho-hove me stil-hi-hill the same?' he insisted, making the car swerve to the right as he spoke, and putting on speed to pass a row of Army lorries.

      The Baby released her lip and said, 'I could kill you.'

      'Of course you could,' Dr Obispo agreed.  'But you won't.  Because you lo-ho-ho-hove me too much.  Or rather,' he added, and his smile became more gleefully canine with every word, 'you don't lo-ho-ho-hove me; you lo-ho-ho-hove ...' he paused for an instant: 'Well, let's put it in a more poetical way - because one can never have too much poetry, don't you agree? you're in lo-ho-hove with Lo-ho-ho-hove, so much in lo-ho-ho-hove that, when it came to the point, you simply couldn't bring yourself to bump me off.  Because, whatever you may feel about me, I'm the boy that produces the lo-ho-ho-hoves.'  He began to sing again: 'I dre-heamt I ki-hilled the goo-hoo-hoo-hoose that laid-haid the go-holden e-he-heggs.'

      Virginia covered her ears with her hands in an effort to shut out the sound of his voice - the hideous sound of the truth.  Because, of course, it was true.  Even after Pete's death, even after she had promised Our Lady that it would never, never happen again - well, it had happened again.

      Dr Obispo continued his improvisation.  'And that thu-hus I'd lo-host my so-hole excuse for showing the skin of my le-he-hegs.'

      Virginia pressed her fingers more tightly over her ears.  It had happened again, even though she'd said no, even though she'd got mad at him, fought with him, scratched him; but he'd only laughed and gone on; and then suddenly she was just too tired to fight any more.  Too tired and too miserable.  He got what he wanted; and the awful thing was that it seemed to be what she wanted - or, rather, what her unhappiness wanted; for the misery had been relieved for a time; she had been able to forget the blood; she had been able to sleep.  The next morning she had despised and hated herself more than ever.

      'I had grottoes and candles and doodahs galore,' Dr Obispo sang on; then relapsed into speech; 'not to mention fetishes, relics, mantras, prayer-wheels, gibberish, vestments.  But I also dreamt which pleased me galore' (he opened his mouth and let out his richest and most tremulous notes), 'that you lo-hoved me sti-hill the same, that you lo-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-hoved me ...'

      'Stop!' Virginia shouted at the top of her voice.

      Uncle Jo woke up with a start.  'What's the matter?' he asked.

      'She objects to my singing,' Dr Obispo called back to him.  'Goodness knows why.  I have a charming voice.  Particularly well adapted to a small auditorium, like this car.'  He laughed with wholehearted merriment.  The Baby's antics, as she vacillated between Priapus and the Sacred Grotto, gave him the most exquisite amusement.  Along with the fine weather, the primroses in the cops and the prospect of learning something decisive about sterols and senility, they accounted for the ebullience of his good-humour.

      It was about half-past eleven when they reached their destination.  The lodge was untenanted; Dr Obispo had to get out and open the gates himself.

      Within, grass was growing over the drive and the park had sunk back towards the squalor of unmodified nature.  Uprooted by past storms, dead trees lay rotting where they had fallen.  On the boles of the living, great funguses grew like pale buns.  The ornamental plantations had turned into little jungles, impenetrable with brambles.  Perches on its knoll about the drive, the Grecian gazebo was in ruins.  They rounded a curve, and there was the house, Jacobean at one end, with strange accretions of nineteenth-century Gothic at the other.  The yew hedges had grown up into high walls of shaggy greenery.  The position of what had once been formal flower-beds was marked by rich green circles of docks, oblongs and crescents of sow-thistles and nettles.  From the tufted grass of a long untended lawn emerged the tops of rusty croquet hoops.

      Dr Obispo stopped the car at the foot of the front steps and got out.  As he did so, a little girl, perhaps eight or nine years old, darted out of a tunnel in the yew hedge.  At the sight of the car and its occupants the child halted, made a movement of retreat, then, reassured by a second glance, came forward.

      'Look what I got,' she said in sub-standard Southern English, and held out, snout downwards, a gas-mask half filled with primroses and dog's mercury.

      Gleefully, Dr Obispo laughed.  'The cops!' he cried.  'You picked them in the cops!'  He patted the child's tow-coloured head.  'What's your name?'

      'Millie,' the little girl answered; and then added, with a note of pride in her voice: 'I 'aven't been somewhere for five days now.'

      'Five days?'

      Millie nodded triumphantly.  'Granny says she'll 'ave to take me to the doctor.'  She nodded again, and smiled up at him with the expression of one who has just announced his forthcoming trip to Bali.

`    'Well, I think your Granny's entirely right,' said Dr Obispo.  'Does your Granny live here?'

      The child nodded affirmatively.  'She's in the kitchen,' she answered; and added irrelevantly, 'she's deaf.'

      'And what about Lady Jane Hauberk?' Dr Obispo went on.  'Does she live here?  And the other one - Lady Anne, isn't that it?'

      Again the child nodded.  Then an expression of sly mischief appeared on her face.  'Do you know what Lady Anne does?' she asked.

      'What does she do?'

      Millie beckoned to him to bend down so that she could put her mouth to his ear.  'She makes noises in 'er stomick,' she whispered.

      'You don't say so!'

      'Like birds singing,' he child added poetically.  'She does it after lunch.'

      Dr Obispo patted the tow-coloured head again and said, 'We'd like to see Lady Anne and Lady Jane.'

      'See them?' the little girl repeated in a tone almost of alarm.

      'Do you think you could go and ask your Granny to show us in?'

      Millie shook her head.  'She wouldn't do it.  Granny won't let nobody come in.  Some people came about these things.'  She held up the gas-mask.  'Lady Jane, she got so angry I was frightened.  But then she broke one of the lamps with her stick - you know, by mistake: bang! and the glass was all in bits, all over the floor.  That made me laugh.'

      'Good for you,' said Dr Obispo.  'Why shouldn't we make you laugh again?'

      The child looked at him suspiciously.  'What do you mean?'

      Dr Obispo assumed a conspiratorial expression and dropped his voice to a whisper.  'I mean, you might let us in by one of the side-doors, and we'd walk on tiptoes, like this; he gave a demonstration across the gravel.  'And then we'd pop into the room where they're sitting and give them a surprise.  And then maybe Lady Jane will smash another lamp, and we'll all laugh and laugh and laugh.  What do you say to that?'

      'Granny'd be awfully cross,' the child said dubiously.

      'We won't tell her you did it.'

      'She'd find out.'

      'No, she wouldn't,' said Dr Obispo confidently.  Then, changing his tone, 'Do you like candies?' he added.

      The child looked at him blankly.

      'Lovely candies?' he repeated voluptuously; then suddenly remembered that, in this damned country, candies weren't called candies.  What the hell did they call them?  He remembered.  'Lovely sweets!'  He darted back to the car and returned with the expensive-looking box of chocolates that had been bought in case Virginia should feel hungry by the way.  He opened the lid, let the child take one sniff, then closed it again.  'Let us in,' he said, 'and you can have them all.'

      Five minutes later they were squeezing their way through an ogival french window at the nineteenth-century end of the house.  Within, there was a twilight that smelt of dust and dry-rot and mothballs.  Gradually, as the eyes became accustomed to the gloom, a draped billiard-table emerged into view, a mantelpiece with a gilt clock, a bookshelf containing the Waverley Novels in crimson leather, and the eighth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a large brown painting representing the baptism of the future Edward VII, the heads of five or six stags.  Hanging on the wall near the door was a map of the Crimea; little flags on pins marked the position of Sevastopol and the Alma.

      Still carrying the flower-filled gas-mask in one hand, and with the forefinger of the other pressed to her lips, Millie led the way on tiptoes along a corridor, across a darkened drawing-room, through a lobby, down another passage.  Then she halted and, waiting for Dr Obispo to come up with her, pointed.

      'That's the door,' she whispered.  'They're in there.'

      Without a word, Dr Obispo handed her the box of chocolates; the child snatched it and, like an animal with a stolen titbit, slipped past Virginia and Mr Stoyte, and hurried away down the dark passage to enjoy her prize in safety.  Dr Obispo watched her go, then turned to his companions.

      There was a whispered consultation, and in the end it was agreed that Dr Obispo should go on alone.

      He walked forward, quietly opened the door, slipped through and closed it behind him.

      Outside, in the corridor, the Baby and Uncle Jo waited for what seemed to them hours.  Then, all at once, there was a crescendo of confused noise which culminated in the sudden emergence of Dr Obispo.  He slammed the door, pushed a key into the lock and turned it.

      An instant later, from within, the door-handle was violently rattled, a shrill old voice cried, 'How dare you?'  Then an ebony cane delivered a series of peremptory raps and the voice almost screamed, 'Give me back those keys.  Give them back at once.'

      Dr Obispo put the key of the door in his pocket and came down the corridor, beaming with satisfaction.

      'The two god-damnest-looking old hags you ever saw,' he said.  'One on each side of the fire, like Queen Victoria and Queen Victoria.'

      A second voice joined the first; the rattling and the rapping were redoubled.

      'Bang away!' Dr Obispo shouted derisively; then, pushing Mr Stoyte with one hand and with the other giving the Baby a familiar little slap on the buttocks, 'Come on,' he said.  'Come on.'

      'Come on where?' Mr Stoyte asked in a tone of resentful bewilderment.  He'd never been able to figure out what this damn fool expedition across the Atlantic was for - except, of course, to get away from the castle.  Oh, yes, they'd had to get away from the castle.  No question about that; in fact, the only question was whether they'd ever be able to go back to it, after what happened - whether they'd ever be able to bathe in that pool again, for example.  Christ! when he thought fit ...

      But, then, why go to England?  At this season?  Why not Florida or Hawaii?  But no; Obispo had insisted it must be England.  Because of his work, because there might be something important to be found out there.  Well, he couldn't say no to Obispo - not now, not yet.  And  besides, he couldn't do without the man.  His nerves, his digestion - all shot to pieces.  And he couldn't sleep without dope; he couldn't pass a cop on the street without his heart missing a beat or two.  And you could say, 'God is love.  There is no death,' till you were blue in the face; but it didn't make any difference.  He was old, he was sick; death was coming closer and closer, and unless Obispo did something quick, unless he found out something soon ...

      In the dim corridor Mr Stoyte suddenly halted, 'Obispo,' he said anxiously, while the Hauberk ladies hammered with ebony on the door of their prison, 'Obispo, are you absolutely certain there's no such thing as hell?  Can you prove it?'

      Dr Obispo laughed.  'Can you prove that the back side of the moon isn't inhabited by green elephants?' he asked.

      'No, but seriously ...' Mr Stoyte insisted, in anguish.

      'Seriously,' Dr Obispo gaily answered, 'I can't prove anything about any assertion that can't be verified.'  Mr Stoyte and he had had this sort of conversation before.  There was something, to his mind, exquisitely comic about chopping logic with the old man's unreasoning terror.

      The Baby listened in silence.  She knew about hell; she knew what happened if you committed mortal sins - sins like letting it happen again, after you'd promised Our Lady that it wouldn't.  But Our Lady was so kind and so wonderful.  And, after all, it had really been all that beast Sig's fault.  Her own intentions had been absolutely pure; and then Sig had come along and just made her break her word.  Our Lady would understand.  The awful thing was that it had happened again, when he hadn't forced her.  But even then it hadn't really been her fault - because, after all, she'd been through that terrible experience; she wasn't well; she ...

      'But do you think hell's possible?' Mr Stoyte began again.

      'Everything is possible,' said Dr Obispo cheerfully.  He cocked an ear to listen to what the old hags were yelling back there behind the door.

      'Do you think there's one chance in a thousand it may be true?  Or one in a million?'

      Grinning, Dr Obispo shrugged his shoulders.  'Ask Pascal,' he suggested.

      'Who's Pascal?' Mr Stoyte enquired, clutching despairingly at any and every straw.

      'He's dead,' Dr Obispo positively shouted in his glee.  'Dead as a doornail.  And now, for God's sake!'  He seized Uncle Jo by the arm and fairly dragged him along the passage.

      The terrible word reverberated through Mr Stoyte's imagination.  'But I want to be certain,' he protested.

      'Certain about what you can't know!'

      'There must be a way.'

      'There isn't.  No way except dying and then seeing what happens.  Where the hell is that child?' he added in another tone, and called, 'Millie!'

      Her face smeared with chocolate, the little girl popped up from behind an umbrella-stand in the lobby.  'Did you see 'em?' she asked with her mouth full.

      Dr Obispo nodded.  'They thought I was the Air Raid Precautions.'

      'That's it!' the child cried excitedly.  'That was the one that made her break the lamp.'

      'Come here, Millie,' Dr Obispo commanded.  The child came.  'Where's the door to the cellar?'

      An expression of fear passed over Millie's face.  'It's locked,' she answered.

      Dr Obispo nodded.  'I know it,' he said.  'But Lady Jane gave me the keys.'  He pulled out of his pocket a ring on which were suspended three large keys.

      'There's bogies down there,' the child whispered.

      'We don't worry about bogies.'

      'Granny says they're awful,' Millie went on.  'She says they're something chronic.'  Her voice broke into a whimper.  'She says if I don't go somewhere more regular-like, the bogies will come after me.  But I can't 'elp it.'  The tears began to flow.  'It isn't my fault.'

      'Of course it isn't,' said Dr Obispo impatiently.  'Nothing is ever anybody's fault.  Even constipation.  But now I want you to show us the door of the cellar.'

      Still in tears, Millie shook her head.  'I'm frightened.'

      'But you won't have to go down into the cellar.  Just show us where the door is, that's all.'

      'I don't want to.'

      'Won't you be a nice little girl,' Dr Obispo wheedled, 'and take us to the door?'

      Stubborn with fear, Millie continued to shake her head.

      Dr Obispo's hand shot out and snatched the box of chocolates out of the child's grasp.  'If you don't tell me,' you won't have any candies,' he said, and added irritably, 'sweets, I mean.'

      Millie let out a scream of anguish and tried to get back at the box; but he held it high up, beyond her reach.  'Only when you show us the door of the cellar,' he said; and, to show that he was in earnest, he opened the box, took a handful of chocolates and popped them one after another into his mouth.  'Aren't they good!' he said as he munched.  'Aren't they just wonderful!  Do you know, I'm glad you won't show us the door, because then I can eat them all.'  He took another bite, made a grimace of ecstasy.  'Ooh, goody, goody!'  He smacked his lips.  'Poor little Millie!  She isn't going to get any more of them.'  He helped himself again.

      'Oh, don't, don't!' the child entreated each time she saw one of the brown nuggets of bliss disappearing between Dr Obispo's jaws.  Then a moment came when greed was stronger than fear.  'I'll show you where it is,' she screamed, like a victim succumbing to torture and promising to confess.

      The effect was magical.  Dr Obispo replaced in the box the three chocolates he was still holding and closed the lid.  'Come on,' he said, and held out his hand for the child to take.

      'Give me the box,' she demanded.

      Dr Obispo, who understood the principles of diplomacy, shook his head.  'Not till you've taken us to the door,' he said.

      Millie hesitated for a moment; then, resigned to the hard necessity of keeping to her side of the bargain, took his hand.

      Followed by Uncle Jo and the Baby, they made their way out of the lobby, back through the drawing-room, along the passage, past the map of the Crimea and across the billiard-room, along another passage and into a large library.  The red plush curtains were drawn; but a little light filtered between them.  All round the room the brown and blue and crimson strata of classic literature ran up to within three feet of the high ceiling, and at regular intervals along the mahogany cornice stood busts of the illustrious dead.  Millie pointed to Dante.  'That's Lady Jane,' she whispered confidentially.

      'For Christ's sake!' Mr Stoyte broke out startlingly.  'What's the big idea?'  What the hell do you figure we're doing?'

      Dr Obispo ignored him.  'Where's the door?' he asked.

      The child pointed.

      'What do you mean?' he started angrily to shout.  Then he saw that what he had taken for just another section of the book-filled shelves was in fact a mere false front of wood and leather simulating thirty-three volumes of the Collected Sermons of Archbishop Stillingfleet and (he recognized the Fifth Earl's touch) the Complete Works, in seventy-seven volumes, of Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade.  A keyhole revealed itself to a closer scrutiny.

      'Give me my sweets,' the child demanded.

      But Dr Obispo was taking no risks.  'Not till we see if the key fits.'

      He tried and, at the second attempt, succeeded.  'There you are.'  He handed Millie her chocolates and at the same time opened the door.  The child uttered a scream of terror and rushed away.

      'What's the big idea?' Mr Stoyte repeated uneasily.

      'The big idea,' said Dr Obispo, as he looked down the flight of steps that descended, after a few feet, into an impenetrable darkness, 'the big idea is that you may not have to find out whether there's such a place as hell.  Not yet awhile, that's to say; not for a very long time maybe.  Ah, thank God!' he added.  'We shall have some light.'

      Two old-fashioned, bull's-eye lanterns were standing on a shelf just inside the door.  Dr Obispo picked one of them up, shook it, held it to his nose.  There was oil in it.  He lit them both, handed one to Mr Stoyte and, taking the other himself, led the way cautiously down the stairs.

      A long descent; then a circular chamber cut out of the yellow sandstone.  There were four doorways.  They chose one of them and passed, along a narrow corridor, into a second chamber with two more doorways.  A blind alley first; then another flight of steps leading to a cave full of ancient refuse.  There were no second issue; laboriously, with two wrong turnings on the way, they retraced their steps to the circular chamber from which they had started, and made trial of its second doorway.  A flight of descending steps; a succession of small rooms.  One of these had been plastered, and upon its walls early eighteenth-century hands had scratched obscene graffiti.  They hurried on, down another short flight of steps, into a large square room with an air-shaft leading at an angle through the rock to a tiny, far-away ellipse of white light.  That was all.  They turned back again.  Mr Stoyte began to swear; but the doctor insisted on going on.  They tried the third doorway.  A passage, a suite of three rooms.  Two outlets from the last, one mounting, but walled up with masonry after a little way; the other descending to a corridor on a lower level.  Thirty or forty feet brought them to an opening on the left.  Dr Obispo turned his lantern into it, and the light revealed a vaulted recess at the end of which, on a stuccoed pedestal, stood a replica in marble of the Medici Venus.

      'Well, I'm damned!' said Mr Stoyte, and then, on second thoughts, was seized with a kind of panic.  'How the hell did that get here, Obispo?' he said, running to catch up the doctor.

      Dr Obispo did not answer, but hurried impatiently forward.

      'It's crazy,' Mr Stoyte went on apprehensively, as he trotted behind the doctor.  'It's downright crazy.  I tell you, I don't like it.'

      Dr Obispo broke his silence.  'We might see if we can get her for the Beverly Pantheon,' he said with a wolfish joviality.  'Hullo, what's this?' he added.

      They emerged from the tunnel into a fair-sized room.  At the centre of the room was a circular drum of masonry, with two iron uprights rising from either side of it, and a crosspiece from which hung a pulley.

      'The well!' said Dr Obispo, remembering a passage in the Fifth Earl's notebook.

      He almost ran towards the tunnel on the further side of the room.  Ten feet from the entrance, his progress was barred by a heavy, nail-studded oak door.  Dr Obispo took out his bunch of keys, chose at random and opened the door at the first trial.  They were on the threshold of a small oblong chamber.  His bull's-eye revealed a second door on the opposite wall.  He started at once towards it.

      'Canned beef!' said Mr Stoyte in astonishment, as he ran the beam of his lantern over the rows of tins and jars on the shelves of a tall dresser that occupied almost the whole of one of the sides of the room.  'Biloxi Shrimps.  Slice Pineapple.  Boston Baked Beans,' he read out, then turned towards Dr Obispo.  'I tell you, Obispo, I don't like it.'

      The Baby had taken out a handkerchief saturated in 'Shocking' and was holding it to her nose.  'The smell!' she said indistinctly through its folds, and shuddered with disgust.  'The smell!'

      Dr Obispo, meanwhile, was trying his keys on the lock of the other door.  It opened at last.  A draught of warm air flowed in, and at once the little room was filled with an intolerable stench.  'Christ!' said Mr Stoyte, and behind her handkerchief the Baby let out a scream of nauseated horror.

      Dr Obispo made a grimace and advanced along the stream of foul air.  At the end of a short corridor was a third door, of iron bars this time, like the door (Dr Obispo reflected) of a death-cell in a prison.  He flashed his lantern between the bars, into the foetid darkness beyond.

      From the little room Mr Stoyte and the Baby suddenly heard an astonished exclamation and then, after a moment's silence, a violent, explosive guffaw, succeeded by peal after peal of Dr Obispo's ferocious, metallic laughter.  Paroxysm upon uncontrollable paroxysm, the noise reverberated back and forth in the confined space.  The hot, stinking air vibrated with a deafening and almost maniacal merriment.

      Followed by Virginia, Mr Stoyte crossed the room and hastened through the open door into the narrow tunnel beyond.  Dr Obispo's laughter was getting on his nerves.  'What the hell ...?' he shouted angrily as he advanced; then broke off in the middle of the sentence.  'What's that?' he whispered.

      'A foetal ape,' Dr Obispo began; but was cut short by another explosion of hilarity, that doubled him up as though with a blow in the solar plexus.

      'Holy Mary,' the Baby began behind her handkerchief.

      Beyond the bars, the light of the lanterns had scooped out of the darkness a narrow world of forms and colours.  On the edge of a low bed, at the centre of this world, a man was sitting, staring, as though fascinated, into the light.  His legs, thickly covered with coarse reddish hair, were bare.  The shirt, which was his only garment, was torn and filthy.  Knotted diagonally across the powerful chest was a broad silk ribbon that had evidently once been blue.  From a piece of string tied round his neck was suspended a little image of St George and the Dragon in gold and enamel.  He sat hunched up, his head thrust forward and at the same time sunk between his shoulders.  With one of his huge and strangely clumsy hands he was scratching a sore place that showed red between the hairs of his left calf.

      'A foetal ape that's had time to grow up,' Dr Obispo managed at last to say.  'It's too good!'  Laughter overtook him again.  'Just look at his face!' he gasped, and pointed through the bars.  Above the matted hair that concealed the jaws and cheeks, blue eyes stared out of cavernous sockets.  There were no eyebrows; but under the dirty, wrinkled skin of the forehead a great ridge of bone projected like a shelf.

      Suddenly, out of the black darkness, another simian face emerged into the beam of the lantern - a face only lightly hairy, so that it was possible to see, not only the ridge above the eyes, but also the curious distortions of the lower jaws, the accretions of bone in front of the ears.  Clothed in an old check ulster and some glass beads, a body followed the face into the light.

      'It's a woman,' said Virginia, almost sick with the horrified disgust she felt at the sight of those pendulous and withered dugs.

      The doctor exploded into even noisier merriment.

      Mr Stoyte seized him by the shoulder and violently shook him.  'Who are they?' he demanded.

      Dr Obispo wiped his eyes and drew a deep breath; the storm of his laughter was flattened to a heaving calm.  As he opened his mouth to answer Mr Stoyte's question, the creature in the shirt suddenly turned upon the creature in the ulster and hit out at her head.  The palm of the enormous hand struck the side of her face.  The creature in the ulster uttered a scream of pain and rage, and shrank back out of the light.  From the shadow came a shrill, furious gibbering that seemed perpetually to tremble on the verge of articulate blasphemy.

      'The one with the Order of the Garter,' said Dr Obispo, raising his voice against the tumult, 'he's the Fifth Earl of Gonister.  The other's his housekeeper.'

      'But what's happened to them?'

      'Just time,' said Dr Obispo airily.

      'Time?'

      'I don't know how old the female is,' Dr Obispo went on.  'But the Earl there - let me see, he was two hundred and one last January.'

      From the shadows the shrill voice continued to scream its all but articulate abuse.  Impassibly the Fifth Earl scratched the sore on his leg and stared at the light.

      Dr Obispo went on talking.  Slowing up of development rates ... one of the mechanisms of evolution ... the older an anthropoid, the stupider ... senility and sterol poisoning ... the intestinal flora of the carp ... the Fifth Earl had anticipated his own discovery ... no sterol poisoning, no senility ... no death, perhaps, except through an accident ... but meanwhile the foetal anthropoid was able to come to maturity ... It was the finest joke he had ever known.

      Without moving from where he was sitting, the Fifth Earl urinated on the floor.  A shriller chattering arose from the darkness.  He turned in the direction from which it came and bellowed the guttural distortions of almost forgotten obscenities.

      'No need of any further experiment,' Dr Obispo was saying.  'We know it works.  You can start taking the stuff at once.  At once,' he repeated with sarcastic emphasis.

      Mr Stoyte said nothing.

      On the other side of the bars, the Fifth Earl rose to his feet, scratched, scratched, yawned, then turned and took a couple of steps towards the boundary that separated the light from the darkness.  His housekeeper's chattering became more agitated and rapid.  Affecting to pay no attention, the Earl halted, smoothed the broad ribbon of his order with the palm of his hand, then fingered the jewel at his neck, making as he did so a curious humming noise that was like a simian memory of the serenade in Don Giovanni.  The creature in the ulster whimpered apprehensively, and her voice seemed to retreat further into the shadows.  Suddenly, with a ferocious yell, the Fifth Earl sprang forward, out of the narrow universe of lantern light into the darkness beyond.  There was a rush of footsteps, a succession of yelps; then a scream and the sound of blows and more screams; then no more screams, but only a stertorous growling in the dark and little cries.

      Mr Stoyte broke the silence.  'How long do you figure it would take before a person went like that?' he said in a slow, hesitating voice.  'I mean, it wouldn't happen at once ... there'd be a long time while a person ... well, you know; while he wouldn't change any.  And once you get over the first shock - well, they look like they were having a pretty good time.  I mean in their own way, of course.  Don't you think so, Obispo?' he insisted.

      Dr Obispo went on looking at him in silence; then threw back his head and started to laugh again.